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Qaps: Qtractor - Ardour plugin settings copier

Hi all,
I've decided to share a little tool I created a while ago for my own needs, it lets you exchange plugin settings between Qtractor and Ardour projects.
It has already saved me more time than it took to write the first wx-only version; now it has PySide/Qt5, wxWidgets, and TkInter GUIs, and works with either Python 2 or 3.
It works directly on the XML files, so use it at your own risk (project file backup strongly recommended).

You can find it here:
https://github.com/P-D-E/qaps

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rncbc's picture

hi copyc4t,

this a really interesting application :)

first impressions are a bit sketchy:
1) the backup functions are crashing the app.
2) it seems to copy/replace only plugin setiings that match exactly in both sides: is this really the only way? I assume that inserting a new instance on any track if not existing should be also possible, os is it not? a one-side only removal should also be possible.

there are of course some caveats on all of that but a very nice idea, nevertheless.

thanks for sharing it here.
cheers

copyc4t's picture

Hi Rui, thanks a lot for your feedback!

1) Sorry about that, the backup function should handle errors (e.g. trying to write to a read-only directory) by showing a message, and work otherwise; how can I reproduce your crash? Is there a message in console after it happens?

2) That's exactly what it does as is, it just maps values between existing plugins. Of course, being able to add plugins to tracks would be an even greater time saver, and that had been already considered in my mind-TODO :)
The only reliant ways to do it I though of so far would be:
- turn Qaps from a simple XML mangler to a plugin host; then it would be able to instantiate any plugin and properly fill an empty plugin template
- rely on external tools to get the needed information (e.g. lv2info)
Suggestions very welcome on other possible ways!

I'll probably experiment with the latter but, before introducing more complexity and external requirements, I wanted to see if this project could help anyone else besides me :)

2b) Removal is surely the easiest thing to implement, but it's just as quick to do it in the DAWs; the main idea was to make it easy to migrate settings especially on whole tracks (vocal treatment, mastering chain...) and this would benefit a lot more from the ability to add plugins than to remove them. The same applies to things like removing entire tracks, or changing the order of tracks and plugins; they can all be done, but both DAWs do it already, and do it well :)

Cheers!

copyc4t's picture

Hi Rui and all,

here's what's in the new version:

- Added creation of LV2 plugins on the destination tracks (it requires lv2info)
- Added handling of active/inactive state of copied and created plugins
- Switched plugin matching from name to URN (i18n names are concatenated differently in Ardour and Qtractor, see LSP plugins for example)

Cheers!

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